Burnout is something we are all familiar with, a human universal that can happen to. Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress and overwork, often resulting in reduced motivation, productivity, and a sense of detachment from one’s responsibilities. It is something that, sadly, I am very familiar with.
For my whole adult life, I have been very physically active. Whether it’s badminton, jujitsu, weights, a foray into Latin dancing or hiking I can’t imagine life without the ability to be constantly in motion. While being physically active is a healthy thing to do, and is something I believe every responsible adult should make time for, it is, sadly, also something that we can have an unhealthy relationship with.
Case in point, while I now take steps to mitigate them1, I have been plagued with injuries my whole adult life. It wasn’t until this year when I hired a strength trainer that the concept of training periodization proper recovery and managing energy levels was introduced to me2. I will not make this post entirely about strength training concepts (this is a tech blog after all!) however suffice it to say that to continuously progress in strength training you need to be mindful of your energy levels and give yourself adequate time to recover.
The purpose of this post
What leads me to write this post is simple: where managing burnout is concerned it’s all related. It isn’t just that there is an overlap between physical and mental burnout, it’s that they are the same. The same principles that can be applied to strength training to avoid injury can be applied to programming or studying to avoid burnout. Likewise being physically injured or burnt out will lead to cognitive burnout and vice versa.
Our energy levels are universal. If we don’t sleep at night due to a sick kid, if we argue with a significant other, or if we marathon a hard game of Civilization 6 until 4am3 our overall energy levels will be drained and other activities will be harder as a result. If left unaddressed and unchecked this can cause a cascading effect and lead to burnout, see the below graph4.
The green line shows adequate recovery after a workout, red line shows working out again before fully recovering.
What is Cognitive burnout?
Mental burnout, also known as Cognitive burnout, is a state of mental and emotional exhaustion that occurs when a person experiences prolonged and excessive stress. It can have a significant impact on cognitive functions and overall well-being. It can lead to poor sleep, emotional exhaustion, mental fatigue, and reduced performance (both physical and mental).
If mental burnout is left unattended, that is to say, if you don’t take your foot off the pedal, some of the above symptoms can become more permanent and very difficult to shake. This can lead to fun things like insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue and disassociation. To belabour the analogy of physical overtraining with mental/cognitive burnout I strongly liken this to a crippling physical injury.
So, now that we know what burnout is and why we want to avoid it let’s talk about some strategies to mitigate it…
1. Know the signs and track them
This is a strategy I have recently implemented myself and it involves listing down the key signs of fatigue and habitually rating them on a scale of 1–10. The six metrics I use are appetite, irritability, exercise enjoyment, brain fog/awareness, sleep quality and general soreness/fatigue5.
For the ratings, a 1 is “I feel as strong in this area as I ever have”, a 10 is “I have never felt worse and I cannot function” and a 5 is “I feel fatigued but I can push through it”.
If the overall rating is between 24–35 (4–5/10 average) then it is something to be mindful of and it’s time to make plans to reduce workload slightly for a day or two and take a mental break for an evening. If the rating is above 35 (≥=6/10 average) then, if possible, it’s time to stop everything that is taxing completely for 24–48 hours until you’re back to your regular function.
My calculator with the numbers changed by way of example.
The thing about fatigue and these metrics is that in your everyday life, it is very difficult to know if you’re close to burnout while you’re living it. These markers represent your current state as a human as opposed to something you can intellectually think about or know. If you have tasks in front of you that need completing they will exist in a different part of your brain than your current energy levels and it is very easy to disassociate the two of them.
What tracking these numbers will lead to is understanding when and why you’re fatigued. If you are consistently in the red or orange and it’s your sleep quality that is always >5 then that tells you that a lifestyle change may be in order6.
It’s something we’re all aware of but it is easier said than done
Before moving on there is a caveat I want to offer. That is the prescription of slowing down during orange and stopping in red is general advice for when environmental factors are somewhat under your control and is not to be taken as gospel.
There are times in life when slowing down is not an option. Life can be chaotic and throw unexpected things at you and it’s unlikely that you can just say “Hey sorry Mum I know you’re sick but I am in the orange right now and can’t take you to the hospital”.
Furthermore, your actions can be situationally dependent. Maybe you are working towards a deadline at work and you know that after it’s completed you will have some time to yourself for recovery. In this instance, pushing yourself through some clear signs of fatigue might be okay because you will have time to recover, just make sure you can enjoy your time off.
On to the next piece of advice…
2. Hijack your cognitive rewards system
Podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman speaks about how the reward system that we have as humans is entirely internal7. If we can reward the effort process we can start to feel joy in the process itself. The more you feel an internal reward for completing a task, the better you’re likely to be at that task and consequently, the more energy you will have for it.
While “hijack your cognitive reward system” is a catchy title what this boils down to is:
Find a way to be passionate about what you’re doing.
If you are here reading this there is a good chance that you are a dedicated software engineer or professional who wants to perform better, why else would you be taking your time to read articles like this? This means that on some level you are passionate about what you do. Something drew you to this pursuit (or any pursuit).
For the software engineers reading, why would anyone under any circumstances want to write alien-looking code that communicates with machines if they weren’t drawn to it in some way shape or form? Reasons for being drawn to this profession (or any pursuit) can vary immensely.
/*
This code might look generic and familiar to you but it's easy to take
for granted that to the general public, it looks like weird voodoo magic
that will never make any sense
*/
function Video({ video }) {
return (
<div>
<Thumbnail video={video} />
<a href={video.url}>
<h3>{video.title}</h3>
<p>{video.description}</p>
</a>
<LikeButton video={video} />
</div>
);
}
Maybe you don’t care so much about the how and are more concerned with the why and the what. If this is the case then you likely feel a sense of pride in what you’re creating and seeing the finished product will be the reward. If you’re like me and the code and system architecture itself is what satisfies you then writing clean, well-tested, expandable, eloquent code will be a huge reward in and of itself.
We all have jobs that we look at and think “I could never do that”, life is too short to not find enjoyment where you can.
In a nutshell, this can be boiled down to the following:
Ask yourself what part of the pursuit gives you satisfaction and chase after it.
3. “Warm up” before starting something hard and “cool down” when finished
This is a basic concept that is seen as essential and obvious where physical activity is concerned but in my experience is often neglected when it comes to cognitive activities.
If your lats aren’t loosened up and warm then how on earth do you suppose you’re going to be able to code?
Imagine loading up a barbell with a weight close to your maximum on a given lift and attempting to lift it with zero warm-up. This is not only likely to fail but it is also dangerous and can result in a minor or severe injury. For this reason, Powerlifters often warm up for between 20–30 minutes before lifting serious weight8. There is no reason why we shouldn’t take the same attitude towards difficult cognitive activities.
If you have something very difficult and involved that you’re working on which has many small facets involved then maybe it’s not wise to jump straight in. In my previous post, I outlined a bad habit software engineers often have where they jump straight into coding before gathering any context for what they’re attempting and why they’re attempting it. Unfortunately, this is a common habit and can lead to hours spent wasting energy on a likely inherently flawed solution.
In this instance taking the time to familiarize yourself with what you need to accomplish next before beginning your task is wise. If it’s something you’re yet to start then dedicating a solid amount of time to gathering context and understanding the task will help you ease into it.
If it is a part of an ongoing project then taking the time to refamiliarize yourself with where you are up to in the project, what you need to do next and how it will fit in with everything else is also a good idea. Even if it seems tedious and it’s something you feel you already have a solid grasp of it will still be time spent thinking about a task before starting it.
Following these steps will make you understand what you’re doing, how you will accomplish it, what you will do next and where it fits in in the overall context of the bigger piece of work. It will lead to mental clarity.
Of course, there are instances where you will be able to jump straight into a task and complete it with minimal warm-up or time spent gathering context. But these will be instances where said task is well within your skillset and not something you find particularly difficult. The aforementioned powerlifter lifting a software engineer’s max is an example of this.
4. Understand the difficulty of the task relative to your current capacity and skill level
Point number 1 on this post was about how to track your current work capacity. While understanding your capacity is important it is also important to understand where your overall skill level currently is and what you can foreseeably attempt without running into too many brick walls.
Again to reference my previous post I spoke about how to go about deliberate learning and constantly, incrementally pushing yourself to grow. If this is something that you are doing then you should have a solid idea of what your skill level is relative to a task you’re trying to complete.
Both skill level and energy levels are relative from person to person. The fictional powerlifter that has appeared in this post will still outlift the average software engineer on his worst day.
Even hungover and depressed Eddie Hall is still out lifting me on my best day.
If you are a senior React developer who is approaching burnout (amber on the aforementioned calculator) and the task in front of you is something mid-level, like adding a feature to a code base you understand like the back of your hand, then have at it. If you are an entry-level full-stack developer and you’re asked to do something advanced, in an unfamiliar codebase, in a language you’ve barely worked with, then it might be time to adjust your expectations of what you can accomplish by yourself and proceed accordingly.
Whatever your skill level is and whatever your circumstance is on the fatigue scale the point is:
Understand and be honest about what your current capacity and ability is and plan accordingly to maximise results and avoid burnout
The relationship drawn between current capacity and skill level leads me nicely on to the next piece of advice…
5. Seek Flow State
Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi was a Hungarian psychologist whose formative years were during and post WW2. He came to ask the question ‘When do we find happiness in everyday life?’ He asked artists and musicians why they continued to do what they do despite little financial incentive. An answer he received from one was very telling…
You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.
What the musician and Mihaly are referring to is called Flow State. We have all experienced a state of flow at one time or another. For programmers, it’s that state where you write beautiful code quickly and efficiently without stopping to think, where you effortlessly implement solutions that may have been difficult for you mere months ago and where time seems to pass by in an instant. You’re not bored, you’re not anxious, your head is not hurting, and you are completely in the moment with the current task you are undertaking almost as though the code is writing itself.
To achieve this your skill level and the difficulty of the current task need to be in alignment. This is why the previous point is important to understand when seeking a flow state. Take a look at the below graph which summarises the state relative to the challenge level and skill.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model
Flow is something that should be sought out and achieved as often as possible if you wish to maximise your potential and your enjoyment in any given task, however, as the flow model shows there are zones that you want to avoid.
I have an anecdote that fits in perfectly with the anxiety zone. In the last 18 months, I decided to challenge myself and forayed into Salsa dancing. Like many programmers, I am someone who is thinking all the time and as a result, letting go and being in the moment with music in a public space has always been difficult for me.
My time in the Salsa community was very rewarding (I may come back yet) and I met some fantastic people, however with much love and respect, the teaching style of the school was to throw everyone in the deep end and push them hard until they learn to swim which filled me with anxiety8.
While the school produced some truly fantastic dancers, and I did hear some compelling arguments for this style of teaching, for someone who was pushing their comfort zone just by walking in the doors this teaching style was not optimal. This was an example of low-skill meeting a high challenge leading to the anxiety zone.
While the anxiety zone is not a desirable place to be the feedback from being in it is visceral and easy to pinpoint. The boredom zone is arguably more dangerous because it’s something that can creep up on you. Imagine a talented developer stagnating in a role where the tech stack is very familiar and the challenge level is below their skill. It’s easy enough to accept a paycheque for work that you did not find hard however while the anxiety zone can lead to a fast burnout the boredom zone is more of a slow erosion. In this zone, over time you will lose passion for your work, and your internal reward systems will not be met.
Flow state is not only very productive and enjoyable but it is also a state that will naturally lead to improvement in your craft, help you find passion (remember the aforementioned internal reward system) and even lead to a positive impact on your energy levels.
So points 4 and 5 in a nutshell boil down to:
Understand your skill level relative to your current capacity and the level of challenge in front of you and seek out the flow state as often as possible.
The last piece of advice…
6. Remember to go easy on yourself
Mental health is very close to my heart and I will likely post about it in the future.
Having standards to hold yourself accountable to is not only a good thing it is also essential. The more in touch with your values you are the more certain you will be about how you choose to live your life. Knowing and acknowledging when you make mistakes and seeking to avoid them in the future is crucial for personal growth and being a person of integrity. Furthermore, if you desire to be better then that will require focus and deliberate work over a long period, there is no way around that.
However, it can become toxic when we start to expect unreasonable things from ourselves and then start to get angry and frustrated by our failure to measure up. There are many instances of mistakes that we will make while doing this thing called life. Maybe we have had a bad week and we haven't quite embedded the habits we set out for ourselves, maybe we're understanding a new concept at a slower pace than we thought we would or maybe we took something personally and reacted in a way that we wish we hadn't9.
While these mistakes should be acknowledged it is important to not pile more bad will onto ourselves with negative self-talk. Some examples of negative self-talk include:
I can't believe I don't understand this yet god I am an idiot
Everyone else can do this except me, I am a failure10
I made a mistake at work, I am always screwing up, why am I like this!?
If we were in the amber as far as our burnout levels are concerned this sort of talk is likely to push us into the red within short order.
I am hoping beyond hope that any of us guilty of this would not judge another person separate from ourselves this harshly, so if this is the case, my next question is why would we talk to ourselves that way? The saying 'you are your own worst enemy' comes to mind here because this act of being hard on yourself is only going to drain your energy levels even more. Let's reframe some of the above examples of bad self-talk:
I don't understand this yet but with persistence, I will. When I do grasp this concept I will be all the wiser for taking my time to understand it and I will be better equipped to help other people.
Not everything in life comes to me easily and that's ok
I made a mistake at work, everyone makes mistakes and I will learn from this and be better as a result.
As an exercise let's go back to the first piece of advice about tracking the signs of burnout. I imagine in most cases when we make mistakes or we feel that we are not measuring up it isn't at times when we're in the green and feeling fantastic… so go easy on yourself.
The truth is the path to success and self-betterment is not a linear one and on top of this no single human is perfect. A piece of advice I have heard when it comes to self-talk and forgiveness is:
Talk to yourself in the same way you would talk to your best friend if they were having a bad day.
Finally a bonus piece of advice…
Take Time For Yourself
One thing I have not spoken about much here is what to do when you are close to burnout or you do need to take some time for yourself. The fact is unwinding is easily worth a post in and of itself and it is unique to each individual.
I have a friend who takes every Friday night to himself to eat pizza, drink wine and play video games. This isn't something I have spoken to him about directly but I imagine taking this time for himself every week allows him to go about his week deliberately and work hard knowing that a good break is coming up.
Maybe your "you time" includes a quiet night in with a book, a series on Netflix or a social activity. Whatever it is if it is to avoid burnout then the more enjoyable and low-stress the activity is the better.
Wrapping Up
I am hoping that some of the advice in this blog post can help you (as it has helped me) to have a better gauge of what burnout is and to be self-forgiving when you're close to it. What all of the advice here comes back to is that life is about seeking balance and being able to enjoy the things you pursue while being mindful of your capacity.
If you are tracking the signs of burnout with the green-amber-red scale it will lead to more awareness of your current capacity, how you got there and perhaps most importantly self-forgiveness or not being your best self on that particular day.
Furthermore, the relationship between understanding the rewards you get out of a task and flow state is a close one
If there is one important lesson to take from this post it is this:
Some days you will feel on top of the world and perform very well while other days will be a struggle. Enjoy the days when you feel good, forgive yourself for the days when you feel bad, and make adjustments for your mental health as needed.
If I missed anything in this post please let me know in the comments and follow me for posts similar to this. I am aiming for this blog to be tech-focused however as a career changer a lot of my best advice isn't necessarily directly tech-related but can easily be applied as a professional working in the tech-space.
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If any of you have bad knees or a bad back then please do yourself a favour and check out the Knees over Toes guy. https://www.youtube.com/c/thekneesovertoesguy ↩
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Training periodization is a big topic and seperate to the scope of this post however but it's well worth checking out whether you're engaging in consistent physical training or not. https://www.trainingpeaks.com/blog/what-is-training-periodization/ ↩
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guilty ↩
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The super-compensation curve as it relates to this post is worth looking at and understanding. While it is exercise-specific I believe it has a 1 to 1 overlap with any cognitively involved task or skill. https://www.griffinfit.co.uk/the-supercompensation-curve ↩
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There are many ideas on how to measure burnout effectively and I am by no means married to the ones I have used. As a rough guide, I feel that they are very good metrics but if you feel they don't apply to you and/or you can think of others that you think would suit you more then by all means. ↩
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It almost goes without saying but I will say it anyway, if your sleep routine is all over the place then virtually every point in this post is moot. Sleep is something I have been improving on but still need to get better at, here is a podcast episode from Andrew Huberman that has very much helped me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2aWYjSA1Jc ↩
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I will let Huberman break down the brain science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bIATTQHooM ↩
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https://www.boostcamp.app/blogs/best-guide-to-warm-ups-for-powerlifting ↩
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Been there ↩
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"Comparison is the thief of joy" - Theodore Roosevelt ↩
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